


Training the Devil

by legendarytobes



Series: the devil and trixie espinoza [2]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Fluff, Gen, Trixie knows, friendship fic, grown up trixie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 00:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20787536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendarytobes/pseuds/legendarytobes
Summary: After Lucifer threw her out, Trixie didn't expect to hear from him again. Then, the insane parade of gifts began...





	Training the Devil

**Author's Note:**

> Continuing from "The Devil and Trixie Espinoza." It's a one-shot but the first one has to be read first before the sequel.
> 
> Second, also using this to fill in a space for Lucifer Bingo 2019.

**Training the Devil**

For the Lucifer Bingo Prompt of “When Hell Freezes Over”

Trixie received the first package a week after she fled _Tenebrae_. She opened her door at the Omega Chi house to slip down the hall to the bathroom when she nearly stumbled over two tins of cookies and a small note in a bright yellow envelope. Thinking it was a gift just because from her big sister, Lettie, she bent down and drug them back into her bedroom. Setting the boxes down, the little blue tea biscuit tins, she opened them up. Then, she frowned.

The first can contained the chocolate chip cookies that were most chocolate chips than batter almost, a recipe she’d invented at eight with Maze and Lucifer one day when both her parents had been on day three of a stakeout and the demon and the devil had been probably bribed by her mom to babysit her. The first batch of even _more_ chocolate chips had almost set the oven on fire, but they’d figured out the perfect ratio after that. Her stomach churned as she opened the second tin and found sugar cookies in the shape of stereotypical devil faces with horns and red icing.

She rolled her eyes and picked up the note. Some of her irritation at Lucifer---just a smidge of it---dissipated when she opened the envelope. The card stock was lovely, thick, and clearly expensive. The scrawl on it was labored and looked probably like a five-year-old at best. That was the part that threatened to melt her heart, even a little. It must have taken him a while with the freaking claws to write anything, but he’d tried:

_B, I apologize profusely. -L_

Again, not Shakespeare, but she figured it would have taken him the better part of an hour to get it done and perfected, even with the chicken scratch it was. But that wasn’t…he couldn’t just growl at her, throw her out of his apartment, and expect a few cookies would fix it. Not after the things he’d said to boot. Trixie shoved the card away in her desk drawer. She couldn’t bear to rip it up, considering the effort that must have gone into it. Still, her stomach was in no mood for “just smoothing it over” cookies. She’d place them in the commons room and ignore it.

He’d get the message, surely because Trixie wasn’t going to accept any apologize from one Lucifer Morningstar. Not any time soon or this century, probably not before Hell froze over.

**

Lucifer did not get the message. The next morning, she opened her door and found two gift bags, one checkered purple and orange and one green with blue confetti on it. The larger one held her shoes and her Swiss army knife. The small held a gorgeous blade, nothing quite as ornate as Maze’s pride and joys, and Trixie was sure it wasn’t hell-forged, but it was still an impressive knife with a hilt formed in the shape of an engraved dragon with glittering rubies for eyes.

She shook her head.

Clearly, Lucifer didn’t understand that sometimes you couldn’t buy your way out of something, although she could clearly use the weapon, considering New Orleans might even be a weirder town than Los Angeles. And more dangerous. Fishing through the gift paper, Trixie found the card she knew would be there. Again, the words were short, but he’d taken the pains to write it himself.

_So, you don’t need a devil around._

Trixie sighed and reluctantly brought the bags back to her room. Cookie she could give away, a blade like that would be a shame to waste. Besides, he wasn’t completely wrong, not that a knife would work against freaking vampires, if her teen years mostly wasted watching _Van Helsing Prep_ were at all accurate. However, it was still a gorgeous blade, and it might come in handy. She’d have to get a sheath somewhere for it, but it would be a shame to dump it. The card was placed away in her top desk drawer along with the first one.

He’d given her some cookies and her stuff back. Lucifer had to have gotten it out of his mercurial system now and wouldn’t be sending more stuff again. Like, he could take a hint, right?

**

Apparently not.

And now Trixie was beginning to understand exactly _how_ he’d worn her mother and the LAPD brass down. On Wednesday, she’d been called down by her house mother to pick up the five foot high mink---and what the fuck was this an FAO Schwartz thing---teddy bear that he’d sent her. The note this time was more cheeky than severe:

_Someone should keep an eye on you_.

Thursday came with a gift basket about half her weight from some fancy schmancy corporate gifts company, the kind of basket with smoked Nova Scotia salmon and cheeses she couldn’t pronounce and even caviar. It was a bitch to drag from the first floor up two flights to her room, and, in the end, she left most of the food or, well, the fanciest stuff that was beyond her in the kitchen for the other girls. She kept the chocolate truffles though. She was mad, not an idiot. Those things were amazing.

The note, just this once, had been prepped by the company so Lucifer must have dictated it. It was typed and, unsurprisingly based on how much Lucifer could talk, was fairly long.

_Dear Beatrice---I am quite ashamed of my behavior last week. It was unfair to you, especially considering what transpired Before happened when you were still a child. I should not have dug in about what happened with those boys. You usually have notable instincts, much like the detectives who raised you, and I know you’re far from an ‘imbecile.’ May these treats help serve as a balm for still healing sleights. ---Yours, L._

Friday’s delivery made her jaw drop. It was left on her bed, just sitting there wrapped delicately in wrapping paper that didn’t look like a weed whacker had attempted it. She knew Maze wasn’t going to help him with this stunt so he must have gone to another one of the Lilim who would. Probably Taka since this screamed a woman’s touch with the delicacy of the work, but what did she know. Trixie was annoyed and confused at how Lucifer could get this into her space. Again, probably the Lilim who wrapped it had also delivered it, but the dude needed boundaries, and to seriously take a hint.

Still, she’d opened everything before and, excusing perishables, kept them. It was her weakness. Opening up the present and promising herself she’d have to send something to _Tenebrae_ or, frankly, bring this weird apology gift parade up with Maze next time they met for lunch, Trixie unwrapped the gift. Then, her jaw dropped. It was an original 1858 edition of _Gray’s Anatomy_, which had to priceless, something that should be under a glass case, and also mostly useless since science had changed drastically in, you know, 200 years. She flipped open the cover and coughed when she read the inscription inside in fading quilled ink:

_Thank you, Mr. Morningstar. Your knowledge of anatomy has been most helpful in completing our work. Here’s our first edition, fresh off the presses, and which only exists due to your insight._

She set the book aside and made a note to go to the library later and ask them how she even began to preserve something like that. Trixie decided it would not help at all to focus on just _how_ Lucifer knew so much about internal anatomy. Obviously, vivisection or an approximation on souls had to be a motif in Hell, and her mind so wasn’t ready to digest that. Ever.

Shaking her head and grumbling under her breath, she picked up the now familiar card stock and flipped it over to read.

_To support your studies. –L_

Oh, this was it. She wasn’t going to just have demons dropping into her bedroom like they owned it. It was too much. Trixie wrapped the book back up and then set it gently in a desk drawer, her instincts telling her that leaving it exposed to the open air would be a complete disaster. She grabbed a jacket and, well, maybe slipped her dragon blade into her ankle holster and set out to _Tenebrae_.

Maze had to help her call this off.

**

“Do you want me to kill him?” Maze asked as she pushed the plate of nachos---extra jalapeños of course---towards her.

Trixie sat down across from Maze at the bar and frowned. “I’m not sure yet. Also, can you?”

“I have the right blades, but since he has wings again, he’d just come back more grouchy, if he bothered. But, seriously, Trix, he has no right to treat you like shit and then send all sorts of crap to you, and if I find out which sibling is his toady on this, they’ll definitely face my knives. No one gets to sneak into your room but me when I’ll some time sneak you out for a real wild night, none of that sorority wannabe crap.”

She frowned at that. “I dunno if I want to go on some wild Thelma and Louise weekend.”

“Oh, you do some day, and when we go, there will be laws broken you didn’t even know were on the books.”

“Maze…”

“Live a little, Trix. It’ll be a blast. You and Cheryl just play at having fun. I practically invented it. But, seriously, tell me who I have to rough up and I will.”

She bit into a nacho and grinned at the spicy flavor. After living in Texas so long, she could never have stuff hot enough. “Well, they’re not all bad…the gifts, I mean.” Reaching down, she slid the knife out of her ankle sheath. “I mean, it’s not as nice as some of your stuff, but it’s pretty amazing, right?”

Maze’s eyes widened. “This is silver, like the real deal, Trix. He gave you a blade that can actually kill a vamp. That’s oddly sweet, you know, for him.”

“It’s what?”

“First off, Hollywood always gets it wrong. So you know how they messed up demons and Hell.”

“True.”

“Well, vamps can be killed by silver, good to keep in mind around this damn town. Second, this blade is probably worth…”

“Don’t even finish that sentence. The book one of your siblings snuck into my damn room like a ninja---”

Maze shook her head and shoved a nacho overflowing with cheese in her mouth. “Don’t be dumb. Who do you think taught Shoguns way back when? Ninjas have _nothing_ on the Lilim.”

“Anyway, getting to the point,” Trixie huffed. Sometimes, keeping Maze on task was hard. “He had one of them sneak an original edition of _Gray’s Anatomy_ into my bedroom. I have no idea how much a first edition of a book like that is worth, but it’d probably pay tuition next year if I sold it. I just…if he’s so sorry, why’d he scream my head off when all I did was stitch him up? Does he thank me for that? Well, nooo, of course not!”

Maze took a sip from her beer bottle. It wasn’t yet ten a.m., but her friend was a demon with an impossible metabolism, so Trixie figured it didn’t really matter. “How did you learn to stitch shit up anyway?”

“Cat neutering…I volunteered for a vet in high school cause I knew I’d be pre-med by then.”

Maze smirked. “I will cherish that information. I swear if he gets all high and mighty about something, I’ll throw that into a conversation.”

Trixie frowned and started spinning her blade in a circle where it sat on the table’s surface. The rubies blurred into red streaks, and it was quite hypnotic. “Is he here?”

“He’s always here,” Maze said simply. “He’s been brooding since you ran out. I gave him a week to sulk, then I tried to get him back to schedule. Honestly, next week is Charlie week in L.A., and after that I have a bounty lined up to track in Chicago. He can babysit himself. The show runs without him too.” She arched one, scarred eyebrow at her. “Why? You afraid he’ll just lumber down the steps?”

Trixie stopped spinning her blade and shoved her nacho plate away, no longer hungry. “Maybe a little. I don’t _want_ to see him. He doesn’t get to just treat me like that cause he’s pissed at my mom or because he’s hurting. I’m sorry he is, really I am, but he took my head off and a bunch of gifts doesn’t really change that.”

“No, I suppose not. Look, kid, I’ll talk to all my siblings---mostly with my fists and blades cause that’s what Lilim understand---and no one will invite themselves into your room ever again.”

“Except you?”

Maze smirked and drained her beer before speaking again. “I’m always allowed wherever I please. But, nah, you can hang out here as much as you want, or we can keep mostly meeting at other places in the Quarter or near your campus. But, no, when he’s in a mood, he can stay up on his floors for weeks. I bet he’ll still be there when I get back from Chicago.”

“I…you think if you talk to him, he’ll stop sending me crap? That would help.”

“I’ll do my best.” Maze brightened at that. “Besides, it means I get to use my knives.”

Trixie considered that and re-sheathed her own blade. “Nah, just yelling, Maze. If it gets that much worse, maybe I’ll let you use some fists, but I…I just want him to stop this weird, half-assed gift parade.” Okay, so it was more than half-assed with how expensive things had to be. Then again, Lucifer might have a circumscribed and pretty crappy life, but he had more money than God. Probably literally. “I just need the distance. He had a chance with me, totally blew it.”

“I get it, not-so-little-human. I’m on it!”

**

For a few days, nothing came, but on Monday, when Maze had clearly already left for Los Angeles, Lucifer apparently decided to make up for a lost weekend. Because, when she got back from chemistry lecture and then a three-hour lab that was exceptionally excruciating and boring. It could sound cool, in the abstract, to create aspirin, but it was actually boring as hell, and she’d almost misdone one of the calculations and molar balancing, and, well, never mind…what she didn’t expect was to walk into the main living room of the sorority house and find a veritable hot house garden of flowers.

They were everywhere---huge bouquets of roses, orchids, mums, lilacs, lilies, and the biggest in the center of red and gold carnations, the flowers of her sorority, and somewhere along the line a certain Devil had to be Googling lately.

The sorority president and the house mom escorted to the kitchen, which even had a few, spare bouquets that had overflown there too. Trixie sat and set her backpack in front of her on the table.

“Look, Annie and Mrs. Murchison, I can totally explain.”

Okay, she really, really couldn’t. There was no Cliff’s Notes for all that had happened between her and her family by extension and the literal Prince of Darkness. And, again, even if she could explain it, the part where the main player in this drama was Satan incarnate sounded totally nuts. It wasn’t, it was just that Trixie’s life had been totally batshit since she was seven.

So, instead, she held her breath and really hoped she wasn’t about to be kicked out of Omega Chi because of Lucifer’s bullshit antics. _Seriously, great job, I’m not mad at all with you now, Lucifer_.

No wonder her mother always seemed to roll her eyes like _all the time_ when Lucifer was around.

Annie tented her fingers in front of her and sighed. “Are you okay, Trixie?”

“I…don’t know what you mean.”

Mrs. Murchison was less polite in her reply. She adjusted the glasses that had gone crooked on her nose and regarded her with intense scrutiny. “She means that the house has been disrupted this last week by some of your gifts. The food was nice enough for the girls, although I have no idea why there were Satan-themed cookies. That seemed inappropriate.”

“It’s what Luc…uh, Luke sent.” Trixie decided his actual name wasn’t gonna help her case either.

Annie pushed a long strand of wavy blonde hair behind her ear. She was pretty flawless in that typical sorority girl way, but super nice, and the type of senior always trying to help the underclassmen. It was sometimes hard to deal with girls who kind of had it all but were so nice, you hated yourself for even being the tiniest bit jealous. “Trixie, seriously, are you safe?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“You have half a florist’s store in this house. This isn’t normal…then the big teddy bear and the basket…all in a week. Are you okay?” Annie leaned closer and patted Trixie’s forearm. “Are you being stalked?”

Trixie laughed because it was kind of that but it so so wasn’t at the same time. Yes, Lucifer had decided he’d just apologize until apparently the end of time, which could be literal between his bank account and his lifespan, with everything he could send to her door. No, they were so not like that, and they would _never_ be like that. Um, eww. So, it kind of was like being stalked a little but in a mostly nice way. It wasn’t like the Devil was one to understand boundaries entirely or why humans did things the way they did. After seventeen years, he had to be better at it than at first, but he was probably, like Maze, never going to grasp all of it.

Or care about rules, which, to be honest, when you were _the_ preternatural badass, probably didn’t apply to you anyway.

“No, Luke’s…it’s really complicated, but he’s not a threat.” _To me. Apparently any vampires around…that’d be a problem for them._ “Look, I’ll talk to him, okay? I’ll get him to chill it out. I swear. I just…you’re not going to kick me out, are you?”

Mrs. Murchison’s face grew purple, and she vaguely looked constipated before she spoke. “It’s hard for the other girls when there is this much disruption…”

“But!” Annie said. “This is a sisterhood, and you’re clearly having some weird romantic thing going on and that’s not okay if you feel unsafe or scared or like he’s smothering you, and you have all your sisters here to look out for you, okay?”

Trixie giggled and hoped it didn’t sound hysterical. It probably didn’t, right? “Oh, no, he’s not…he’s really really so not my boyfriend. Like at all. Just a friend…we, uh, go way back.”

“He bought out a flower shop as a friend?” Mrs. Murchison asked. “Is he even in college?”  


“He’s a townie,” Trixie said, and lying or, well, bluffing was pretty easy when you’d learned how to skate the literal truth from a demon. “But we have a long history and it’s just…I’ll talk to him, alright. Promise!”

“And what are we going to do with the flowers?” Mrs. Murchison demanded.

Annie frowned and considered it. “They’d be such a shame to waste.”

Trixie nodded. They were an annoyance for her and, seriously, what had Lucifer even been thinking? Clearly, even Maze’s threat hadn’t calmed his need to make up his screaming fest up to her. She’d have to, even if she hated the idea, go to _Tenebrae_ herself and tell Lucifer to cool it. Ugh, perfect. That said, while she didn’t need a couple dozen flower arrangements and neither did the Omega Chi’s, she did have an idea.

“The children’s hospital at Tulane could use a lot of brightening up. Let me call and see if maybe we can come bring it. An impromptu charity project with the girls driving them over?”

Annie beamed. “That’s super nice. I candy stripe there. I can call myself and talk to one of the attendings I know pretty well.”

Trixie nodded. “Exactly!”

Mrs. Murchison shook her head. “And if we ended up with a greenhouse again tomorrow?”

“I’ll head over to, uh, Luke’s right after I put my books away. It won’t happen again. Believe me.” She stood then and filtered through the main living room and flowers gone wild on her way to the main stairway.

Despite everything, Trixie couldn’t resist stopping at the arrangement---the one that reflected her sorority colors---and picked it up. It was the prettiest and something in her couldn’t turn it away. It was only after she’d trudged the two floors up to her room that she was able to find the card tucked away there. It was a personal touch card, one written with his own hand and, she assumed, delivered by a Lilim to the florists.

_B – I should never have thrown you out. I have a dearth of friends, and I’d like you to still be one. -L_

She figured it must have taken him hours and multiple cards (it was already scrawled across two stapled together) before he could write that much. Sighing, she took the card and, this time, shoved it into her pocket. It was time to go back and storm the castle, before Lucifer did something really bonkers like buy her a car.

He wouldn’t do that, would he?

Right?

No, scratch that. He totally would.

**

He was in the main living area of his quarters and not the top floor. When she rounded the stairwell to the third floor, she expected to pass by the empty sofa, bar and trashed piano. What she hadn’t quite expected to find---or been ready to see exactly---was Lucifer sitting on said sofa with a tumbler of Scotch between his claws. She wondered how deep he was into a bottle, not that it would affect him.

“Oh, uh, hey,” she said. _Perfect, Trixie, you sound really ready to tell him off_. “I got all your stuff.” She reached into her jeans’ pocket, as if she needed visual aids as proof, and waved it in the air. “The cards have been a nice touch.”

“I…” he shrugged, his voice low and quiet. “…forgive me, urchin. My handwriting used to be better.” He laughed again, one of those broken ones she’d heard more than a few times the morning she’d patched him up. “Everything used to be better.”

Well, Maze said he’d been in a mood, apparently it had only gotten more maudlin since she’d left for Los Angeles. Trixie wasn’t even sure what she was supposed to say. Sighing, she slid onto the piano bench and eyed him. It still hurt to look, to see how jagged and burned and stretched his skin was. He’d admitted it hurt, that he’d learned to bear it over the years, but it shouldn’t have to hurt. None of this should have ever happened. A crazy murderer started stalking her mom and killed her dad’s girlfriend. Lucifer stopped it. How did you get punished for that? Cain should be the one suffering and, okay, Lucifer had killed him and he was a murdering dick so he had to be in hell, but why did Lucifer have to be in one too?

She offered him a watery smile. “We probably have to stop meeting like this.”

He arched a leathery eyebrow ridge at her. “Pick which floor you’d like to convene on, child. We can go to the main floor of _Tenebrae_. I would make quite the cameo at happy hour, but it has happened before. I assumed in my room would…too many bad memories there already, yes?”

“I was mostly joking,” Trixie conceded. It wasn’t like there was anywhere else but _Tenebrae_, itself, they could hang out in. It just left her feeling flat footed because it was Lucifer’s territory. There would never be a time---if she even decided to keep speaking with him---that he and she would meet on neutral territory. “So, you know you have to stop sending me things, right?”

“Mazikeen may have mentioned that and then sworn at me in Lilim and English and a few other languages in between a bit of a smackdown.” He rubbed at the back of his head with his free hand for effect. “She was very adamant.” Then, Lucifer smirked at her, and something flared in those deep red eyes of his, something she could recognize as his old mischievous spark. “But then she was gone, off to the nephew.”

“Have you ever met Charlie?”

“I have not seen or spoken with either Linda or Amenadiel since I left California. Mazikeen is quite close with both of them, and she dotes on Charlie during her weeks in L.A. She hasn’t, as far as I know, been able to teach him weaponry yet, but he’ll come of age soon enough for it. And I have no doubt that the Silver City’s Greatest Warrior.” Lucifer rolled his eyes at that. “and the best torturer Hell has ever seen won’t win out lobbying Linda on teaching Charlie how to really fight.” He shrugged. “She did a fair job with you.”

“I wandered into a cemetery drunk and almost became a vamp snack. I think I failed Maze’s Training Academy pretty hard,” Trixie offered him a genuine smile at that.

“You managed to still shove your knife to the hilt in a vampire’s shoulder. For someone scared, drunk, _thralled_, and already losing blood, that’s impressive.” He shrugged and winked at her. “For a human.”

“Sure, well, I…do you not like Linda and Amenadiel anymore?”

“Words were had with my brother. They were not the best ones I could have used.”

She laughed. “My Grandma Penelope has an expression, you know? She likes to say ‘don’t let your mouth write checks your body can’t cash.’ You have quite a history of shooting your mouth off, Lucifer.”

He grimaced and drained his Scotch before setting the tumbler on the floor. “I’m aware. My rash instincts have never served me well.”

She chuckled again, and she wasn’t sure if anger wasn’t laced in it. “And the bible tells me so. Yeesh, Lucifer, what are you? Like thirteen billion?”

“More or less, depending on the estimated age of the universe and subtract a few years from that. What’s your point, urchin?”

“You never learned in all that time not to have a knee jerk reaction to things?”

“I did try with Dr. Linda, but I didn’t always understand her lessons on feelings correctly. Clearly, I’ve failed at that as well.” He waved his right hand with a flourish. “I was never good at heeding anything. I admit that.”

“No shit.”

He blinked at her, as if he didn’t expect the expletives from her mouth. She wasn’t sure why. He should have. After all, he was the one who’d once taught her cheater swear words that weren’t _technically_ wrong. Besides, she wasn’t seven anymore.

“Quite,” he replied, hunching over and tenting his claws against each other. “So, where do we go from here?”

“You can’t keep harassing me, Lucifer.”

“I hardly think that---”

“I live in a giant sorority house and even our living room is full because you bought up every flower in the French Quarter. You can’t…you can’t do that. You definitely can’t buy me a first edition of _Gray’s Anatomy_.”

“I had that in my personal collection, obviously.” He sniffed. Was he offended? What the hell. “Did you not read the inscription.”

“Yes, which, still getting used to some mindfucks here, Lucifer.”

“I treated you poorly. I was trying to make it up to you.”

“You’re bribing me.”

Lucifer opened his mouth then clamped it shut again. He looked back down at his hands before he spoke again. “I treated your horribly.”

“Like trash. That’s the phrase. You made me expendable, and yeah, I’m not an idiot and I know lashing out when I see it. Dad had a lot of that after Charlotte and before he got in therapy over it in Austin.”

Lucifer’s shoulders slumped. “And I never meant…”

“Cain killed Charlotte. Cain’s responsible for that fallout. He played everyone at that precinct and must have tricked half the LAPD to get that job. It wasn’t just you who got tricked. I just mean that I’m not seven, and I know you were yelling at me cause you’re mad at my mom. That’s super immature, by the way.”

Lucifer didn’t look up at her when he spoke. “That is only partially correct. I am not angry at you, but neither am I angry at your mother. I…I could never be that. I was the one who chose to omit too much from her for too long, and, as it turns out, omission and lying are probably too close to each other after all.”

Trixie frowned and leaned closer on her bench. “Then, who are you mad at?”

He stood and stalked out to the balcony, only stopping himself when he realized it was still daylight in the Quarter and too many people would see him as he was. He stood on the threshold between the apartment’s edge and the veranda and finally shuffled away and toward his bar. “I thought it would be obvious, urchin.”

She frowned and watched as he forewent a new tumbler to drink the whiskey straight from the bottle. “Oh, you’re mad at yourself.”

“Always. That’s been a constant, but in the last decade it has burned quite brightly, this ire. But it was rude and thoughtless and wrong of me to turn that on you, to hurl truths at you as fiercely as Mazikeen does her throwing stars.”

Trixie stood up but didn’t venture away from the piano. She wasn’t ready, at least not yet. “You weren’t completely wrong on a few things. I shouldn’t have been in that cemetery at all. If my parents ever found out, they’d ream me too. Believe me, Maze laughed at me after she gave me a two hour lecture on safety and _then_ insisted on starting some training schedule up with me again on weekends. I was a complete dumbass.”

“You were looking for fun, and it’s natural in a college co-ed. I had no need to dig in quite as hard as I did.”

“You know which thing really hurt. You know, Lucifer, and I’m not a hundred percent sure there’s not some truth in that.”

He set his drink down and turned to her, cursing when the edge of his right wing knocked the bottle with a crash to the floor. It shattered into a dozen shards and he bent low to pick them up before she shouted and stalked up to him.

“Nope. I’m in the room so I’m so not stitching you up again when you cut your palm. I…do you think Maze or someone has gloves around or like a towel?” She shook her head. “Never mind, give me a few to grab stuff from the bathroom, and I’ve got it.”

He narrowed his eyes at her but stood back up. “I’m hardly a weakling, just have a mortality sitch. I do not need you to fend for me.”

“I don’t need to be your vet on call,” she snarked. It was probably a little mean, but last time they’d seen each other, he’d flat out said she was just the annoying little kid he had to placate to fuck her mom. So, clearly, Lucifer earned some snark back. “Don’t touch anything, be back in a jiff…for a human.”

If he were wounded by her insult, he didn’t show it. Instead, he crossed his arms over his massive chest and glared at her. “You mean for a miracle?”

“Doesn’t exactly give me demon speed,” she huffed. Trixie sprinted up the stairs before her Devil made the idiotic mistake of trying to touch glass. She really didn’t like suturing him. First, Trixie so wasn’t qualified and second, why do that if they didn’t have to.

In his stadium sized bathroom, she grabbed a handful of towels and the waste basket. Then, hurried down the stairs just in time to shout at Lucifer again for not following directions.

“Seriously, dude, you can’t just…here have a towel and do half with me.”

He caught the terry cloth with ease and then frowned a little when a part of it tore on his claws. “I suppose I can have Mazikeen order more. After you, urchin.”

She got to her knees and he followed suit out toward the left side of the bar and angled away from her, trying to give space to his massive frame and wings. They worked side by side cleaning things for a few minutes, before it was all as it had been and she picked the trash can back up and set it atop his bar.

“See, good as new and I don’t have to…”

“Be a vet?” Lucifer asked, spitting out that last word with distaste. “I suppose it’s as good a description as any. The great Beast from Revelation and all that. Of all the low life, useless thugs to get a species demotion over…Cain certainly was not the cockroach I thought would do it.”

Trixie sighed and wiped at her brow, which had been sweating a bit from the stress and the exertion. “Look, okay, that so didn’t start this out on a good foot or any foot. I shouldn’t have said it that way. I just didn’t want you hurt again.”

He shrugged and feigned nonchalance so poorly she wanted to roll her eyes. Did he not get how much he seemed to pout around her? How obvious he was? Some Lord of Hell he was. “I wasn’t hurt, and I’m hardly human so I suppose a real doctor would be useless anyway.”

“I’m barely a bio student,” she corrected. Trixie held both hands up, palms flat. “Truce? At least for the next few minutes.”

“I promise not to growl at you or send you from my flat ever again.”

“Don’t promise things that might not happen again.”

He sighed and his wings dropped a little. “I would never do that again. It was shameful what I did, and even before Mazikeen yelled at me initially, I was sleeping poorly over it.”

“I gave Satan nightmares?”

“In a manner of speaking, perhaps so. I did not dream well that night.”

“Me either.” She reached out and patted his shoulder. “But if we’re ever friends again, I have to know if we were friends to start with.”

“Do you mean was I being truthful with what I said about humoring you all this time?” he asked and, hand to G…no couldn’t say that…seriously, not a word of it a lie, his wings perked up as he spoke.

“Did you mean you were only waiting to try and have sex with my mom, so you pretended to give two shits about me?”

“I was shot for you, urchin. Yes, for her too, but I died and went to Hell to help protect you as well. It’s a place, as I’m sure you can tell, I avoid. No, Beatrice, I don’t suppose we were exactly friends before since you were a child, but for an offspring, I was rather fond of you. I…I still do not like children, but you were the most tolerable one I ever met.” He smirked at her. “I suppose it has to do with how well you manipulated others even as a child. It was rather impressive.”

“Cool!” She blurted that like the child she’d been before sobering again. “Still, it really hurt, and I can’t…I can’t just be friends with you because you’re drowning---and I can’t even begin to understand how bad this sucks, I get that---and so far you’ve shown me that your reaction is to just scream at me because you’re upset. That’s not fair.”

He hesitated a glance at her and the eyes seemed a bit dimmer than before. Maybe she’d learned to read expression in them yet. Well, if she wanted to stick around. “I understand, and I would love to say that my behavior last week was because I have been away from humans for so long. I mean, the only employees I speak with are the Lilim, usually Maze and Taka.”

She laughed a little. “So, guy demons are as easy to herd as guy anything else then?”

“Perhaps,” Lucifer said, grinning. “But that would be a lie, and I don’t do that, not as a matter of practice.” He regarded her carefully and when he continued, his tone was low and quiet. “I know better. I was never good at caring much about conventions, but I knew far better than to dig at you as I did.”

“To fucking growl at me and call me a moron?”

“Yes, that was wrong.”

“Yeah, it was.” She pulled away and crossed her arms over her chest. “I need to know you won’t do it again because, and I am betting Miss Linda said this to you more than once, but seriously, you have like a billion issues. And playing ‘kick the urchin’ is _not_ going to be your solution to it. Am I clear on that?”

“Yes, Beatrice.”

It was a little heady that she’d made Satan contrite. She probably shouldn’t think about it too hard.

She didn’t relax her posture but instead broached the whole freaking Barnum and Bailey parade of elephants in the room. “Second, and this is probably the bigger deal even, but I am _not_ my parents. I mean, I love Mom and Dad, but I’m different too. So if you just assume that ‘oh she’s just a bit of Dan Espinoza and a bit of Chloe Decker so I know how she’ll react all the time’ because you so don’t. I’m my own damn person, and I’m here and I’m pissed at you for an earned reason, Lucifer, but I’m not freaking out…erm, anymore. But again, I wasn’t freaking out to start till you screamed at me. So, if you can promise not to use me as a punching bag _and_ to agree to remember that I’m _Trixie_ and not anyone else, then we’re cool.”

“Those seem like adequate terms, urchin.”

She quirked her chin up at him. It craned her neck, honestly to get a good view. He was, after all, very tall. “I think so, but especially, you can’t just assume I’m gonna be just like my mom cause I’m not. And I’m sooo not some replacement either. Gotcha?”

“I would not think that, although I cannot promise never to think of your parents. Sometimes there are things you do or things you say, and…it is hard. I do see ghosts of both of them in you. But I shall try my hardest, Beatrice, to not assume I know how you’ll react or think because of my relationship with Daniel and the Detective…well, the one I used to have.”

She relaxed a bit. “Alright, so we can try this, but like totally probationary, and you can’t send me more like crazy crap. My house mom is looking to evict me after you unleashed a greenhouse in our main living room!”

“I thought it was rather charming, myself.”

She rolled her eyes. “You would.”

“Well, I have no need to shower you with gifts since they worked.”

“Next time this comes up, you should just pay off part of my semester tuition, the loans are gonna kill me.”

“It would be less creative.”

She almost rolled her eyes again, and then stopped herself. Trixie had just finished explaining she wasn’t her mom and yet she had a feeling Lucifer elicited this kind of motion (and much face palming) from most of his friends and, once upon a time, from the bulk of the precinct as well. That or she’d had more patience at nine.

“No weird or extravagant gifts.”

“Fine then.”

“Okay,” she agreed, still anxious that she was making a big mistake. “So terms agreed on: you don’t lash out at me ever, you don’t just assume that I’m my parents, and you so don’t buy out half of Best Buy or something to drop in my dorm room.”

“I’d never be that pedestrian, Trixie. Give my gift giving skills some credit.”

She huffed and held out her hand. “Cool, and in return, I’ll come back on Mondays when I don’t have class and we’ll hang out. Sound doable to start?”

“It does,” he agreed, although he hesitated over shaking her hand back. Looking to the floor, he sighed. “Perhaps ending it the traditional way is not the best.” As if she were dense, he spread his fingers so that Trixie had a better view of his long, sharp claws.

She smiled, and, instead, carefully wrapped her fingers around his hand. Initiating the shake, she waited for him to follow the motion. “Deal then.”  


“You know, most humans aren’t supposed to do that,” he replied, finally eying her. “Deals with the devil don’t always end well.”

“I need less surprises showing up at the Omega Chi house. I’m willing to take my chances. So, what are we going to do now?” she asked, pulling her hand back.

Lucifer nodded toward his sofa. “Have you ever heard of a delightful television series called _Bones_? I’m quite fond of it, and it’s streaming…”

**

Although she’d outlined what she’d assumed were fairly clear terms, Trixie had insisted that she receive no more gifts that he had to buy. She really should have remembered who she was dealing with. It was always about the wording, and some small part of her even knew that Charlotte would have been impressed by Lucifer’s creativity in finding loopholes. The part of her that really needed a killer GPA to get to medical school was relieved.

The following Monday morning after a boring _Bones_ (so very very boring but Lucifer liked it) marathon, Trixie received an email from her chemistry professor explaining that he’d had time to sleep on it and had decided that everyone deserved a second chance for a make-up. While she gladly accepted the offer since a zero was going to kill her average, Trixie dialed up the landline for the Prince of Darkness. (It was easier to put on speaker with somewhat impaired hands than a cell, which basically the only understandable reason for not having a cell in 2028.)

He answered on the third ring. “Yes, Beatrice. I was asleep I’ll have you know.”

“Sorry you were up till three a.m. partying then, Luci.” She sing-songed that last part. Tough if he ran a nightclub. She had English at eight a.m. and checked her university email before classes always. “You know, I got the weirdest email today….”

“Did you?”

“We need to revise our deal already.”  


“You didn’t say anything about setting right the issue with your missed examination.”

“A quiz and uh no threatening my profs.”

“I am very convincing with just a brief chat. There was no actual threat involved, just a light suggestion.”

Trixie tried to process that. Lucifer clearly never left _Tenebrae_, but she’d inadvertently gotten him out of there first to the cemetery and then to, oh crap, apparently scare the ever-loving crap out of Dr. Pachinsky. Well, at least he was getting out some.

For her.

Weird.

“Okay, well I’m totally adding no seeking out any of my teachers from now till the end of time and, uh, add in bosses too.”

“I would never---”

“You so would. I…till next Monday right?”

“Of course, urchin.”

“You promised to trade me _Angel_ since we had to watch two whole seasons of _Bones_.”

“You earned the privilege of watching _Bones._”  


“Sure, whatever,” she hesitated before the last part. “I…thank you, Lucifer. Even if you probably shortened Dr. Pachinksy’s lifespan by five years, you also saved my chemistry grade. See you next Monday.”

“It will be my pleasure.”

“And seriously no more weird gifts.”

“Can that rule start on Wednesday?”

“What’s coming tomorrow?!?” She shrieked on her end, loud enough to have several of the students who’d filed in early for English class glare at her across the lecture hall. Trixie lowered her voice again. “Seriously, what did you do this time?”

“Nothing extravagant by my standards, Beatrice, truly. However, you aren’t allergic to anything with fur, are you?”

Trixie sighed and bumped her forehead a little against the desk. Training the Devil was going to be harder than she thought.


End file.
